


Despite everything

by Alphawave



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Bombing, Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:06:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26751805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alphawave/pseuds/Alphawave
Summary: 22 years after their first meeting, and the atom bomb is on its way to drop down over Revachol and destroy the world. As the apocalypse rears its head, Harrier du Bois and Kim Kitsuragi share one final smoke.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 41





	Despite everything

**SHIVERS** — In ten minutes, the first shot will be fired. The city will be leveled, bringing out ghosts upon ghosts

 **VOLITION** — You tried. For 22 years you have tried to save this place you hate and love. The beauty and decay that is Revachol. You tried to save your home.

 **PAIN THRESHOLD** — But you’re old, and the world is unkind, and you can only do so much when all you know is the end result. This will be the end of the world, and it’s all your fault.

 **EMPATHY** [Easy: Success] — It’s not your fault. You didn’t start the killing and the destruction. You didn’t cause death after death.

 **LOGIC** — In the end it is not disease or war or the pale, but humanity that dooms this sacred city.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — 22 years after you first met him and he hasn’t aged all that much. His face is more wrinkled and his baldness has gotten worse and his hair is a smoky mix of salt and pepper locks, but apart from that, he hasn’t changed. Not physically anyway.

 **YOU** — You bring up a lighter to his face, help him light his one a day before lighting your own cigarette. It’s morning, and you’ve quit smoking years ago, but you know he won’t say anything about today. He’ll let today slide. You both need it.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — He inhales, then coughs, belching out dark plumes that melt into the sky.

 **PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT** [Medium: Success] — He’s been coughing more and more lately. His lungs have been blackened permanently. Lung cancer eats him up from the inside, chewing at his essence.

 **HALF LIGHT** — Death by cancer is terrible enough, but a far worse fate awaits him.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “So. When will it happen?”

 **YOU** — “Soon. Maybe an hour tops. I reckon minutes.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — He nods solemnly. “What are our chances?”

 **ESPRIT DE CORPS** [Trivial: Success] — He knows this already. He just wants to hear it again. Just to delude himself that he had a chance, a choice. But you both know what choice he will make regardless of the circumstances. It’ll always be the same. His fate will always be in the same, and in turn, so is yours. 

**VISUAL CALCULUS** [Easy: Failure] — I've said this too many times before. You know this already. 

**YOU** — “If the atom bomb hits the water, we might have a chance. If we’re near the Pox or somewhere at East Revachol it’s possible there might be survivors. But for us here at Jamrock, for everyone in Martinaise…”

 **INLAND EMPIRE** [Easy: Success] — Fire. Explosion. A mushroom shaped cloud that reaches for the sky, destroying Revachol and its citizens in one fell swoop.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — Kim nods slowly and butts the end of his cigarette down the balcony, watching it fall down onto the deserted streets.

 **SHIVERS** [Medium: Success] — People have fled, or hold themselves up at home. The animals sense the disturbance and migrate early, prepared for the worst. Many don’t believe the rumors. No soul likes to think that someone can cause so much death in one go like that.

 **EMPATHY** [Trivial: Success] — You could have saved them. Saved Revachol, save people, save the world. You could have finally done some real good in your life. A mark on history, so you may be remembered for a thousand years as someone better and brighter than they are.

 **PAIN THRESHOL** D [Impossible: Failure] — You could have saved Kim, Jean, yourself. And you killed them. You’ve killed everyone by being unable to stop this.

 **YOU** — You can’t stop crying even if you wanted to. “Fuck, I fucked up, Kim.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “We both did. I didn’t believe you for the longest time.” His voice sounds rough. Restrained.

 **EMPATHY** [Medium: Success] — It’s taking a lot of strength for him not to cry as well.

 **SAVOIR FAIRE** — You can’t blame him if he does.

 **YOU** — “No, Kim, it is my fault. I know about this. I knew about it for decades. I had so much time to plan, so much time to stop the apocalypse from occurring, but no matter how much I try, I can’t change fate.” You take a drag of your cigarette despite your clenched throat. “I doomed us all. I doomed us.”

 **ELECTROCHEMISTRY** [Medium: Failure] — What should give you some rush, some relief, now gives you nothing. It’s just paper and smoke. Utterly meaningless. 

**LOGIC** [Medium: Success] — Just like your attempts to save the city. 

**SHIVERS** [Impossible: Success] — High up in the sky, a single aircraft flies over the clouds, undetected. It carries a large payload, holding the secret of destruction. When it releases it, you will have less than a minute before everything and everyone is gone.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — He places his hand on your back and rubs small, gentle circles. The dark circles under his eyes look worse today. He looks as terrible as you feel. “You couldn’t do anything even if you wanted to. You don’t have wealth and fame and power to back you up. All you have is your mind and me, and that’s not enough. If it wasn’t the bomb, the Pale would have crept in eventually.”

 **HALF LIGHT** — The world is doomed. It just took a while before people began to notice.

 **YOU** — “I know, but…but maybe…if only I…”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “Don’t think about what you could have done. It’s in the past. We can’t do anything about it anymore. It’s over. Revachol will be no more.” He takes a drag of his cigarette, butting the ashes out.

 **PERCEPTION** [Heroic: Success] — Every muscle of his body is tense. Every movement he makes is slow, deliberate, all to avoid the shaking of his hands.

 **EMPATHY** [Medium: Success] — He’s scared. And so are you.

 **ESPRIT DE CORPS** [Formidable: Success] — Officers escort the rich and wealthy away, leaving only the filth behind. Looters take whatever they want, not knowing of the death that awaits them from the skies above. Many take their lives into their own hands, destroying themselves and the bonds they have to those still living. 

**PAIN THRESHOLD** [Easy: Success] — You could jump. Just climb over this small hurdle and fall to your crashing, crushing death. Or maybe you can get the old service pistol hidden away in your drawer and pull the trigger.

 **CONCEPTUALISATION** — Specks of blood splatter the canvas, a big ol’ fuck you to Revachol.

 **VOLITION** [Trivial: Success] — You can’t go that way. That is not what is in your destiny. Your destiny is to remain here, charred to pieces, the one man who understands you dying by your side. It is the only noble death. It's the only way you can die.

 **HALF LIGHT** [Easy: Success] — Not unless Kim wants to go out his own way. You won't live a second longer than he does. Not in these circumstances.

 **YOU** — “Do you…want to end this early? Go by our own hand?” You mimic taking a pistol to your mouth and pulling the trigger. 

**KIM KITSURAGI** — He must be really sick, for he considers it for several seconds. “I don’t think I could go out that way,” he says eventually. “I’m not as strong-willed as you are.”

 **YOU** — “I can’t either,” you say. “Not anymore. If I have to go down, I’d rather go down with you.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — The barest of smiles, but a smile nonetheless. “You’re going to be the death of me, Harry.”

 **YOU** — “I am. Thought we established that,” you say without humour.

 **SHIVERS** — Motor carriages begin to race down the street as the grey spectacle becomes visible to the naked eye. Some gasp and point at the sky while others pretend to see nothing. The city is in panic. It cries, knowing it will be executed in the most cruel of ways.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “You should join them,” Kim says, pointing to a family boarding into a taxi. “Get out of here. Go and live.”

 **YOU** — Your eyes dart to the cane at Kim’s side, supporting his right side.

 **ELECTROCHEMISTRY** — Even in his advanced age, he looks so cool. He makes a cane look like a fashion statement, and not a necessity. Like his salt and pepper hair was dyed specifically to his liking and his glasses are purely aesthetic.

 **PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT** [Medium: Success] — Soon he’ll need a wheelchair to support himself. His muscles weaken by the day.

 **LOGIC —** Even if the atom bomb does not strike for a hundred years, even if the pale does not threaten to swallow the world whole, Kim's days are numbered. You'll outlive him in your natural lifetime, barring sudden heart attacks. 

**PAIN THRESHOLD** [Impossible: Failure] — You can’t bare the thought of you alive and Kim dead, never to see him or even his remains. You can't bare to be the last one standing.

 **YOU** — “I'll only go if you come with me.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “Harrier,” he snaps.

 **RHETORIC** [Medium: Success] — It’s a warning. Almost a plea.

 **YOU** — “I can’t do this without you, Kim. Come with me, if we rush out now we can get out of the city. We can go somewhere, go anywhere, somewhere safer than here. We can live out the rest of our lives.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “But I won't be home. I won't be here.”

 **YOU** — “What has Revachol done for you? What has this city done for you?” The tears bead your beady eyes.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “It let me live,” Kim utters. “Revachol helped me find my calling. Made me more comfortable with myself, a man stuck between two worlds, two contrasts, belonging to neither. And it helped me find you. It's become my home. I can't leave it behind, not without giving up a piece of myself.”

 **YOU** — “But you are my home, Kim.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “I know.”

 **YOU** — “I thought I could be your home…”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — This time he allows himself a small frown. His sunken eyes finally turn to look at you, and as always you feel the thrum of his authority pulling you through those ebony irises.

 **EMPATHY** [Trivial: Success] — Only he looks at you like that. Only he lets you see him with a speck of vulnerability.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “You are many things to me, Harrier. But you are not my home. You never will be.”

 **PAIN THRESHOLD** [Trivial: Success] — You know that. Doesn’t make it easier to tolerate though.

 **EMPATHY** [Easy: Success] — He only says this because it’s you. For all the time you’ve known him, you could never hate him. Not even when he spills the most bitter of truths.

 **LOGIC** [Easy: Success] — Despite everything, you still love him.

 **VOLITION** [Easy: Success] — Despite everything, you are still alive.

 **SHIVERS** [Easy: Success] — Despite everything, you are still going to die a horrible, horrible death.

 **YOU** — You take another drag of the burning piece of paper and tobacco in your hand, taking in the blue sky shrouded with dark stormy clouds, the empty buildings and the empty vessels that occupy them. Concocted stories you dreamt of your future many years ago, the alternate histories in alternate timelines, flood your already-full brain.

 **CONCEPTUALIZATION** — Two hands entwined together, matching silver rings hidden behind gloves. A luxurious house with enough space for a dog or two or ten. Adopted children frolicking with the neighborhood kids, their fathers watching them from a distance.

 **VOLITION** [Easy: Success] — You could never be a rock and roll superstar. Just a superstar cop. That’s what you tried to become.

 **LOGIC** [Medium: Success] — But you’ve chilled since then. Took cases slower, more carefully. Did not work yourself to the bone trying to prove your worth. Your record is impressive enough. There’s no need to impress others anymore.

 **ELECTROCHEMISTRY** [Medium: Success] — The one man you want to impress was already smitten with you by the end of your first case together. He’s still smitten with you, through thick and thin.

 **SHIVERS** [Formidable: Success] — The aircraft is approaching its position. The finger is on the trigger. With a click of the button the world will irrevocably change.

 **YOU** — “We’ve got less than a few minutes.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “Is that so?” He butts the last bit of his cigarette out and tosses it down the balcony, landing perfectly in a small pot plant. “Three-pointer,” he smiles.

 **DRAMA** [Legendary: Success] — The smile is true but forced. Made wider against its will to hide the sadness its wielder truly feels, sire.

 **YOU** — “Any last words?”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “Honestly, I thought I would have something cool to say right about now. But honestly?” He stares deeply at you as the screaming and panic sounds throughout the streets. “I don’t have anything.”

 **YOU** — “I’ve got some last words,” you say.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “Yeah?”

 **YOU** — The words come so naturally. “I love you, Kim. From life to death to the pale and beyond.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — A laugh chokes out of him, louder than you expect, snorting as he goes. The laugh lines crease his age spotted skin.

 **ELECTROCHEMISTRY** [Trivial: Success] — Even when he’s laughing at you, he’s beautiful.

 **DRAMA** [Medium: Failure] — Did you say something wrong?

 **YOU** — “What’s so funny?”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “I’m not laughing at you. I just…I find it ironic that I finally get the courage to say it, and this might be the last thing I’ll get to say to you.”

 **LOGIC** [Trivial: Failure] — Could it be?

 **ELECTROCHEMISTRY** — It can’t be…

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — He takes your free hand in his. Ungloved, his hand feels so much smoother than yours, like he’s sharing his soul with you. His dazzling eyes look upon you, the sun shining its light on the moon.

 **COMPOSURE** [Trivial: Failure] — Fucking shit, Harry, he’s actually going to say it. Keep it together. Don’t fucking ruin your last moment with him.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — In a voice as quiet as a dormouse, Kim says, “I love you too, Harrier du Bois.”

 **COMPOSURE** [Impossible: Failure] — Your knees buckle. Your eyes water. The atom bomb in your heart explodes, breaking you down from the inside out, molecule by molecule. The floodgates are open. You’re broken.

 **SUGGESTION** — Twenty two years you’ve waited to hear those words from Kim’s lips. Twenty two years you’ve wanted him to say it to your face and not just with his fingers and his actions. And you will never get to hear them again. Never ever.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — His face falls. He wipes some of the tears away with his thumb. “Harry?”

 **YOU** — “I just…fuck. You had to say it now? Before we burn into a crisp?”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — He doesn’t hide the slight peak of crimson on his pale face. “Better late than never, right? That’s what you always say.”

 **RHETORIC** [Easy: Success] — You do always say that.

 **YOU** — “I know, just…I’ve always wanted to hear it. And I’ll never get to hear it again.”

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — “I’ll never get to hear you say it to me either,” he whispers.

 **COMPOSURE** [Impossible: Failure] — There’s no way you can keep this bottled in any longer. You pull Kim towards you for a tender hug as you cry into his shoulder.

 **EMPATHY** — All your fears, all your doubts, all your worries, you release them into Kim.

 **SHIVERS** — The trigger is deployed. The safety mechanisms are disengaging. Disaster will strike in less than a minute.

 **VISUAL CALCULUS** [Medium: Success] — From its estimated trajectory, there’s a 0% chance either of you will survive. You two will be at the epicenter, blown apart so completely that there will be nothing left of you.

 **ESPRIT DE CORPS** [Impossible: Success] — Hundreds of years from now, corpses from this time will be recovered, holding hands or holding each other. There will be an exhibit, and the youth will know no better of the true terror of knowing your time is coming by the second. Their only peace is that the deaths were quick and painless and so so long ago that they seem a distant memory.

 **KIM KITSURAGI** — For several seconds Kim is stiff in your arms. He doesn’t pat your back, just tightens his grip on his worn cane.

 **COMPOSURE** — And against all the odds, he drops the cane and wraps his arms around you, crying into you too. He's hard, loud, unabashed. Snot runs down your shirt, wet spots staining the fabric. His walls have completely come down.

 **SHIVERS** — The bomb is deployed, dropping from the sky. It gets larger, larger, becoming more visible in the sky.

 **PERCEPTION** [Heroic: Success] — You see it above you, falling from the heavens, bathed in sunlight yet dull and dark like night. It heads towards you, fast yet slow, mesmerizing and terrifying.

 **VISUAL CALCULUS** — You have seconds. Make them count.

 **YOU** — Your hands slide up Kim’s sodden, bawling face and kiss him on his lips such that he might never see the bomb.

 **ESPRIT DE CORPS** [Easy: Success] — He does not see it but he knows the meaning behind this kiss. It’s goodbye and hello. It’s love and loss. It’s everything you’ve never said to Kim and you never will. This kiss is everything you are going to miss.

 **ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN** — He’ll never truly know how you feel. You’ll never live up to your potential.

 **LIMBIC SYSTEM** — And yet despite everything you are at peace. You’ve made it this far, Harry. You’ve survived up until now. It’s longer than you thought you’d get.

 **PERCEPTION** — With a loud bang, the bomb hits the harbour, spreading through the city like wildfire. You only get a glimpse of the light before it engulfs you both completely.

 **LIMBIC SYSTEM** — First your sight shuts down, then your sense of touch and heat. Kim’s flesh melts into yours, an incomprehensible gloop that resembles no living creature. Your nerves are fried, and your breathing stops. Then your heart, and finally, finally your hearing. You don’t even get to scream, to shout.

 **ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN** — All that’s left of you is nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No—

**GAME OVER**


End file.
